Fr. Kevin Drew, Catholic Exchange - (In 1935 Pope Pius XI)... wrote that, in 1936, around 6,800 priests, religious, and nuns in Spain were murdered by communists. In accordance with Marxist ideology, these communists promised that man could break his chains and live in an earthly paradise if only private property, marriage, and the family were destroyed. Communism’s archenemy then was the great defender of marriage and the family: the Church. Beyond this example, history shows time and time again that wherever communism takes hold, the Church is brutally suppressed.